Treat Myself like a Food Addict Every Day

I love my smile in this video clip. More specifically, I love the fact that I can say “I treat myself as a food addict every day” with a matter-of-fact, pleasant smile on face. 

Being a food addict is who I am and how I live my life. I can deny that truth, but I live with food addiction at this weight, at twice my weight, or at any other weight. 

My addiction will be in the center of my life one way or another. I will be in control of my addiction, or my addiction will control me.

There is no middle ground for me. I wish there was. But, goodness and hope have emerged from knowing this about myself, and I feel incredible — better than ever.

To name myself as a food addict conveys a newfound self-acceptance around my lifelong shadows of weight. This self-acceptance started with silently speaking and believing that reality.

At first, the admission was harder than it needed to be. I gave too much importance to addiction as a personal shortcoming of willpower and mind and not enough to my genetic realities.

Most importantly, I did not understand my hunger drive. I would lose half my weight before I felt my hunger drive. It took even longer to understand.

Credible scientific sources say that upwards of 1,000 genes are involved in obesity. That is a lot of science to understand. No one understands it all. But, I understand enough.

I can feel some of that scientific research intimately in the truths of my body. But, these truths are not always the ones I want to be true.

There is a direct cause-effect relationship between the food I eat and my hunger drive. Certain foods disrupt, obscure, trigger, and completely dysregulate my hunger drive. 

Learning this required periods of abstinence, of ultra-clean eating, and then the failures of veering off the path after eating certain foods.

Failures allowed me to discover these relationships. And, rediscover them. Sometimes, I am a slow learner — especially around things I do not want to be true.

My addictive processes are predictable around food and go deeper than I ever imagined. Discovering these has been a multi-year process. My failures are as recent as a few days ago. 

The more I learn, uncover, and understand about my hunger drive, the more likely I will be to succeed, to stay out of that 97% failure rate for sustaining weight loss.

I had lost half my weight before I even spoke my truth. My first audience was a friend who had traveled that path ahead of me and used the words as freely as I do now.

I wanted that same freedom and liberation. Speaking this truth in my life empowered me. Each time I said it, I got a little more comfortable.

Soon, I realized that I gained much and lost nothing — especially with the people who matter most in my life. They help me help myself.

I have found unexpected allies. I had wrongly assumed that people smaller than me could not understand food addiction. Finding this common ground has surprised me and widened my circle.

Speaking my truth around food addiction has been an important act of hope and personal empowerment, a crucial part of transforming my own shadows.

If you have stayed silent in your own struggle, consider speaking your personal truth about your shadows – first to yourself and then to others. Doing so may be a liberating and transformative step in your journey.